Secretive TPP treaty could kill creators' rights

No longer possiblg to get copyrights back from studios, labels, publishers

Published: 12/18/2013 at 9:31 PM

(Boing Boing) The Electronic Frontier Foundation has new analysis of the leaked Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty, a secretive trade deal being hammered out without any public oversight, and set to be fast-tracked through the US Congress without substantial debate. EFF’s piece focuses on the treaty’s provisions that affect “termination rights,” an obscure but important part of copyright law that allows creators to take their assigned copyrights back from the companies who bought them after 35 years. The studios, labels and publishers hate this, as it allows creators who scored big hits early in their careers when they were getting paid peanuts for their work to take those successful works back and re-sell them at a more appropriate price.